Posts Tagged ‘NCAA’

Supreme Court Rumbles NCAA Scam

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021

I used to follow some college athletics. Now I don’t. At the same time universities were getting more and more expensive, they were also getting more and more woke. College sports used to be an oasis from that nonsense, but so many programs bent the knee to #BlackLivesMatter last year that I just stopped paying attention.

So I was happy to see yesterday’s Supreme Court decision that colleges couldn’t collude to avoid paying student athletes.

he U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out limits set by the major governing body for American intercollegiate sports on education-related benefits that schools can give players as a violation of antitrust law, handing a big victory to student-athletes fighting for greater financial compensation.

The 9-0 ruling put the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) further on the defensive as it struggles to preserve a business model – huge revenues generated by college sports and big salaries for executives and coaches while players remain unpaid – under assault on multiple fronts.

The NCAA’s curbs on non-cash payments to college athletes related to education – including benefits such as computers, science equipment and musical instruments – were part of what critics have called the fiction of amateurism in college sports, an enterprise that rakes in billions of dollars annually.

These limits, according to the ruling authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, are anticompetitive under a federal law called the Sherman Antitrust Act. The ruling could pave the way for challenges to other NCAA compensation rules, a prospect that Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared to invite in a separate opinion agreeing with Gorsuch.

Kavanaugh wrote that those other limits on compensation for players “also raise serious questions under the antitrust laws” and suggested they likely would be struck down if lower courts follow the analysis laid out in Monday’s ruling.

“The NCAA is not above the law,” Kavanaugh added.

For years, football and basketball have been big moneymakers for some colleges and universities (and money losers for others). Why not let student athletes benefit from that? Tradition? Hell, colleges are hellbent on destroying every tradition that made them vital institutions (including freedom of speech, free inquiry and the rule of law), so why not that one as well?

I’ve long thought that traditional football power schools (Alabama, Texas, USC, Oklahoma, etc.) could make a lot more money by leaving the NCAA and forming their own competing football conference of 15 or so teams, playing a round robin schedule plus playoffs. They could pay athletes and forge a partnership deal with the NFL to provide year-round professional coaching. It would provide more entertainment than watching power schools beat up on Rice or UNT every year.

America’s entire higher education system needs a hard reboot: Shut down all colleges and universities for a year, eliminate SJW departments like Women’s Studies entirely, hand every woke professor and administrator a pink slip, and deny federal loan and contracts for any university it costs students more than 10 grand a year to attend. Right now all this is a pipe-dream, but college athletics are one of the last sources of unwarranted affection ordinary people feel toward higher education. (“College is a $120,000 hooker, and you are an idiot who fell in love with her!”) Maybe the demise of the current plantation athletic complex will help pave the way for real reform.

Here’s the text of the decision.

And here’s a South Park clip to round out the post:

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Posted in Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, video | 3 Comments »

LinkSwarm for April 2, 2021

Friday, April 2nd, 2021

Greetings, and welcome to a Good Friday LinkSwarm! I had the day off, so I slept ridiculously late, which is why you’re getting this in the late afternoon evening.

  • “9 Crazy Examples of Unrelated Waste and Partisan Spending in Biden’s $2 Trillion ‘Infrastructure’ Proposal.”

    1. $10 Billion to Create a ‘Civilian Climate Corp’

    The Biden administration proposes spending $10 billion to create a “Civilian Climate Corp.” The White House claims that “This $10 billion investment will put a new, diverse generation of Americans to work conserving our public lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, and advancing environmental justice through a new Civilian Climate Corps.”

    2. $20 Billion to ‘Advance Racial Equity and Environmental Justice’

    The proposal sets aside a whopping $20 billion—more than the latest COVID package spent on vaccines—for “a new program that will reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments and ensure new projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access.”

    3. $175 Billion in Subsidies for Electric Vehicles

    Electric vehicles: A technological novelty so good it won’t catch on without hundreds of billions in subsidies. At least, that’s apparently what the Biden administration thinks, as its infrastructure proposal earmarks a “$174 billion investment to win the electric vehicle market.”

    The spending will take the form of manufacturing subsidies and consumer tax credits, which historically have benefitted wealthy families most. For comparison, the proposal carves out more for green energy goodies than it does on the total $115 billion to “modernize the bridges, highways, roads, and main streets that are in most critical need of repair.”

    It’s pork all the way down.

  • Who’s in charge of the Biden Administration?

    After Joe Biden’s performance last Thursday, every American should be demanding to talk to the manager. That’s because while President Joe Biden’s pathetic display during his “matinee” presser showed clearly that he is not in charge of our country, it also begged the obvious follow-up question not being asked by the 25 reporters in the room: If Joe Biden isn’t in charge of running our government, who is?

    If you didn’t actually watch the press conference—and every American should-especially those who voted against Trump by voting for Biden because they’d thought he was an improvement—by now, you have doubtless read the accounts of the President’s cliff notes that included scripted talking points and photos of the journalists upon whom he was directed to call. His staff treated him in much the same way as does the family of someone in the early stages of dementia, where they put pictures on doors and cabinets as a reminder of what goes where.

    If Joe Biden were my next-door neighbor, his condition could be described as sad, and he would be afforded every consideration and allowance possible for someone entering the final stage of the aging process. He is not, however, my next-door neighbor. He is supposed to be the President of the United States. His performance was mortifying. This is one of the most powerful men in the world. He controls our budget. He controls our military. He controls our nuclear weapons. What he clearly does not control is himself.

    And if he isn’t in control of himself, then who is? Who is in charge?

  • You know that Slow Joe has told a particularly egregious lie when even the Washington Post has to call him on it.
  • Matt Taibbi: “Master List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus”:

    Update 3/21/21 “All 17 intelligence agencies,” October 19, 2016. Before the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton and others publicly stated that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies backed an assessment that cyberattacks in 2016 came from the “highest levels of the Kremlin.” That was later corrected in congressional testimony to four agencies. It was actually a hand-picked team from three agencies, and the chief conclusion from that group came mainly from CIA chief John Brennan, who in his own book, “Undaunted,” published in 2020, revealed that he had overlooked dissenting analysis from two members of the working group. Brennan said he believed “the quality of the sources justified the high confidence,” but the Times and other outlets reported that Brennan was basing much of his confidence on a single human source in Russia whose information was allowed to bypass the normal vetting process….

    So a story that began as an assessment on Russian interference agreed upon by “all seventeen agencies,” became four agencies, then it was a hand-picked group from three agencies dominated by the CIA director, who overrode dissenting analysts within the group, likely because of confidence in one human source.

    There are twenty five entries on the list, and Taibbi admits he could have gone “on and on.”

  • Democrats finally give up on stealing an Iowa congressional seat.
  • Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down Democratic Governor Tony Evers’ mask mandate. Good.
  • How cancel culture is like the East German Stasi.

  • Russia is building up forces on the Ukraine border again.
  • Just in case all my previous posts on this subject were unclear: “Free States Faring Far Better Than Lockdown States in One Huge Way, New Data Show”

    The results are in—and they overwhelmingly vindicate the free states over the authoritarian experiments. First, we saw that states with the harshest restrictions didn’t necessarily achieve the best COVID-19 death outcomes. Florida has fared far better than New York and New Jersey, for example, and multiple studies have found no correlation between lockdown stringency and death rates.

    Yet lockdowns have come at an enormous economic and human cost. We’ve seen mental health problems and child suicide spikes, an increase in domestic violence, an uptick in drug overdoses, and much, much more. And, of course, the economic toll of shutting down businesses and criminalizing “non-essential” livelihoods has been devastating.

    The national unemployment rate was a poor if not disastrous 6.2 percent in February. Yet the just-released state-level unemployment rates for last month show that the devastation hasn’t been equal across the board. New Labor Department data reveal that many free states have returned to nearly their pre-pandemic unemployment rates—while lockdown states dominate the wrong end of the list.

  • Why isn’t everyone in Texas dying? “The lockdowns have had no statistically observable effect on the virus trajectory and resulting severe outcomes. The open states have generally performed better, perhaps not because they are open but simply for reasons of demographics and seasonality. The closed states seem not to have achieved anything in terms of mitigation.”
  • Speaking of which: A timeline on the one year anniversary of 15 days to slow the spread.
  • Louis Farrakhan supporter Noah Green killed one capitol police officer and injured another. Now that the media knows it wasn’t a white trump supporter, expect the story to disappear. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Delta hates Georgia’s policies. Communist China? Not so much.
  • The Democrats “increase election fraud so we can win” bill is unconstitutional. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “75% Of All U.S. Voters, 69% Of Black Voters Support Voter ID Laws.”
  • “Cuomo Ordered Aides To Conceal Nursing Home Death Numbers While He Negotiated $4M Book Deal.” Sounds like a corrupt, indictable offense to me…
  • The NCAA’s free athletics plantation is coming under increased scrutiny at the Supreme Court. Even famously taciturn Justice Clarence Thomas asked questions.
  • Try to contain your shock, but Cruz Noguez, the mano owned the SUV involved in the carash that killed 13 illegal aliens, was a coyote.
  • Related: “Austin Resident Faces Life in Prison for Alleged Smuggling That Killed 8 Illegal Aliens.”

    Prosecutors have also charged Austin resident Sebastian Tovar, age 24, with transporting illegal aliens resulting in death for an incident that killed eight people on March 15.

    The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a press release that a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officer tried to stop Tovar, who led police on a 50-mile car chase.

    “Traveling north into the southbound lane on Highway 277, Tovar collided with another vehicle head-on, resulting in the death of eight illegal aliens that had been in Tovar’s pickup truck,” the DOJ said. “The driver and passenger of the vehicle into which Tovar collided are hospitalized and in stable condition.”

    The DOJ said that, after the incident, border patrol agents apprehended 12 illegal aliens, two of whom confessed to being connected to Tovar’s alleged smuggling activities.

    The defendants in the March 4 incident are 28-year-old Isidro Rodriguez Jr. and 18-year-old Bianca Michelle Trujillo-Lopez. They face the possibility of life in federal prison if convicted.

    The indictment charges Rodriguez and Trujillo-Lopez with illegal alien transportation resulting in death, illegal alien transportation resulting in serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy, and two counts of conspiracy.

    “Court records allege that on March 4, 2021, the defendants were traveling on FM 2523 near Del Rio when a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper attempted to stop them for speeding,” the DOJ said in a press release.

    “The driver, Trujillo-Lopez, tried to outrun the trooper, at times reaching speeds over 120 miles per hour. She ultimately lost control of her vehicle and rolled it multiple times after missing a curve on the road.”

  • Alas, state trooper Chad Walker died of his wounds. (Previously.)
  • Homeschooling triples during the pandemic
  • “Conservative Humorist Chad Prather Launches Campaign for Texas Governor.” He’s running against incumbent Governor Greg Abbott in the Republican primary. I can’t say that I’ve actually heard of Prather before (which would tend to bode ill for his chances), but he starts out with 196,000, which is more than a goodly number of Democratic Presidential candidates started out with. Of course, all of them lost too…
  • Dwight covers stopping the bleed, with a side order of Julia Child’s liver and a nice Chianti.
  • Review of Kong: Skull Island in advance of seeing Godzilla vs. Kong this weekend.
  • “Controversial Georgia Law Requires Poll Workers To Check Voters For A Pulse.”
  • “Actors Vow To Boycott Georgia And Only Film In The Xinjiang Region Of China.”
  • OK, I chuckled:

    And the incidental music is from Plants vs. Zombies…

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    Posted in Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »

    Kristi Noem’s Tranny Pander

    Tuesday, March 23rd, 2021

    Last year, when South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was keeping her state open despite pushes for endless lockdowns from the MSM, there was lots of talk about her as a dark horse 2024 Presidential candidate among conservative activists. Well, that talk is dead following her caving in to the radical transsexual lobby by using a technical veto on a bill prohibiting men from competing in women’s sports that she had previously promised to sign:

    On Friday, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem balked on signing House Bill 1217 when the bill to promote fairness in women’s sports crossed her desk. But instead of vetoing the legislation, Noem returned the bill to the House with what she called “recommendations as to STYLE and FORM.” The Republican governor’s spin, however, cannot withstand scrutiny—most specifically her claimed reasoning for removing collegiate athletics from the bill’s protections.

    As finalized by the South Dakota legislature, Section 1 of H.B. 1217 provided that athletic teams and sports in the state, including at institutions of higher education, must be expressly designated as male, female, or coeducation. It also stipulated that teams or sports designed as female must be “available only to participants who are female, based on their biological sex.”

    After promising to sign H.B. 1217, Noem instead took to Twitter on Friday to state why she had changed her mind and instead returned the bill to legislators for modifications. Noem elaborated on her reasoning in a letter to legislators.

    Snip.

    The most striking changes Noem demanded, however, came in her insistence that the legislature strike collegiate athletes from the bill’s protection and eliminate Section 4’s promise of a remedy to girls and women harmed in a violation of the bill, or who were retaliated against for complaining about violations of the law. Let’s break these changes down a bit, because they render the entire proposal meaningless.

    As drafted by the South Dakota legislature, Section 1 of the bill mandated that athletic teams or sports, at the elementary, secondary, and collegiate level, designated as female be “available only to participants who are female, based on their biological sex,” as verified by the students’ parents (or, if they are over 18, the student), based on “genetics and reproductive biology.” Then, in Section 4, the South Dakota legislature created a “cause of action,” or a right to sue, entitling students deprived of athletic opportunities or otherwise harmed as the result of a Section 1 violation to sue the school.

    In other words, Section 1 demanded schools—including colleges—limit women’s sports to women. If an education institution violated that mandate and allowed a male student to join a female team, Section 4 provides that a female athlete injured by that violation could sue the school and obtain an injunction to prevent a continued violation and damages to remedy the harm.

    Section 4 added a second protection for South Dakota student athletes: It also protected students from retaliation if they report violations of the act to a school representative, athletic association, or a state or federal governmental entity with oversight authority. Thus, for instance, if a female basketball player complained to an athletic department that a coach had allowed a male athlete to join her team, and the school responded by banning the complaining student from school-sponsored sports, the female student would be entitled to sue the school for retaliation.

    In sending the bill back to the state legislature, Noem made two requests related to these interrelated provisions: She excluded collegiate athletes from the bill’s coverage and then directed the legislature to strike, or delete, Section 4 in its entirety.

    In other words, Noem asked the South Dakota legislature to amend Section 1 so that the bill applied only to elementary and high school student athletes, while then denying those students any remedy for violations of the law. All that would remain, then, if the state legislature adopts Noem’s amendments, would be these two sections.

    Snip.

    Noem’s explanation would lead one to believe that H.B. 1217 conflicts in some way with the governing regulations of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and that if the bill became law, South Dakota collegiate athletes would be barred from competing in NCAA events and tournaments.

    To the contrary, NCAA regulations provide that if a male competes on a female team, that makes the team a “mixed team,” which is ineligible to compete for a women’s NCAA championship. The NCAA does, however, allow a male “student-athlete being treated with testosterone suppression medication for Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism,” to compete on a women’s team after “completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.”

    However, nothing in this NCAA policy requires a college or university to treat a male student-athlete as female. Given the number of religiously affiliated colleges and universities participating in NCAA sports, any such mandate would face tough opposition and likely be unworkable.

    The NCAA also does not ban collegiate athletes from events or championship competitions if their schools do not allow transgender athletes to compete on teams of the opposite sex. That is why, when Idaho passed a bill last year similar to the bill pending in South Dakota, nothing of the sort happened to Idaho.

    So not only is Noem surrendering on issue she promised to fight for, she’s preemptively surrendering on behalf of an institution that itself hasn’t yet surrendered.

    Reality is not optional. Defending the reality of biological sex is not a hill that can be surrendered to radical social justice, especially since the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with conservatives. If Noem is unwilling to fight for that hill because it gives Chamber of Commerce RINOs a case of the vapors, then she isn’t the leader Republicans need.

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    Posted in Republicans, Social Justice Warriors | 8 Comments »